Not surprisingly, California’s politicians and others are blaming “climate change” for what has happened and one expects to see future lawsuits against energy companies, claiming that they have caused warming that is responsible for the current spate of wildfires in California and elsewhere. However, the real culprits are California officials themselves and the legal and regulatory straightjackets they have created that prevent people from taking the necessary actions to abate fire risks.
“The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic,” Ingalsbee said. There’s only one solution, the one we know yet still avoid. “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load.”
https://mises.org/mises-wire/la-fires-progressive-governance-claims-more-victims
Mises Wire • William L. Anderson
Much has been written about the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, including articles on this page and other libertarian sites. After several days of uncontrolled fire and destruction, we are very familiar with the governmental failures that have led to this current crisis. Progressivism is the guiding star of both California’s state government and local governments in the highly populated regions on the state’s Pacific Coast, and progressive policies have all but guaranteed this latest disaster.
Governing ideologies matter and matter greatly. The former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany would not have been as repressive as they were without guiding ideologies of their political leadership. Modern progressivism, while not as virulent and violent as the German and Soviet regimes, operates with a similar utopian worldview to repressive ideological regimes, and people living under progressive governments pay a serious price.
California’s governance has been ultra-progressive for more than a decade and cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have become the poster children for failed progressive regimes. Democrats hold a 3-1 edge over Republicans in both state houses, while the California congressional delegations in the US House and Senate are dominated by the Democratic Party, which has won almost all the statewide elections for office in the past 30 years. Democrats hold a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, which means Republicans cannot mount a challenge to any policies favored by Democrats.
Not surprisingly, California’s legislation is highly progressive, from the setting of high minimum wages to environmental policies, all of which impose huge costs on Californians that people in most other states don’t directly experience. Likewise, Los Angeles and San Francisco also have progressive governments that place leftist ideology over the nuts and bolts of ordinary governance.
Like most progressives, California’s lawmakers and activists believe that they can accomplish whatever they wish through legislation and coercion. When people in California believed that insurance rates were “too high,” they pushed through Proposition 103, which, according to Connor O’Keeffe, “severely decoupled” insurance rates from risk, which encouraged more building in fire-prone areas. On top of that, California’s insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, has announced a one-year moratorium on insurance cancellations, which means insurance companies cannot cancel a homeowner’s policy even if they are in a fire-prone area.
By forcing the few insurance companies that still write policies in California to offer below-cost premiums in places where wildfires are likely to happen, the state is all-but-forcing these companies into bankruptcy, as the claims in the latest fires certainly will out-strip whatever revenues they received from premiums. Given that the estimated damages are likely to be the highest ever from a wildfire, perhaps more than $20 billion, this will affect insurance companies across the nation.
Not surprisingly, California’s politicians and others are blaming “climate change” for what has happened and one expects to see future lawsuits against energy companies, claiming that they have caused warming that is responsible for the current spate of wildfires in California and elsewhere. However, the real culprits are California officials themselves and the legal and regulatory straightjackets they have created that prevent people from taking the necessary actions to abate fire risks.
Elizabeth Weil, writing in ProPublica, points out that more than a century of fire suppression in California forests has created conditions that when fires start, they turn into conflagrations:
The pattern is a form of insanity: We keep doing overzealous fire suppression across California landscapes where the fire poses little risk to people and structures. As a result, wildland fuels keep building up. At the same time, the climate grows hotter and drier. Then, boom: the inevitable. The wind blows down a power line, or lightning strikes dry grass, and an inferno ensues. This week we’ve seen both the second- and third-largest fires in California history. “The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic,” Ingalsbee said. There’s only one solution, the one we know yet still avoid. “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load.”
However, both the National Environmental Policy Act and California air quality laws, among others, make it extremely difficult to do anything to mitigate the damage done from fire suppression.
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